Sharpton: 'We're not out of this yet'

The Rev. Al Sharpton on Friday urged caution about positive reports coming out of Ferguson, Missouri, saying that one peaceful night hasn’t solved the issue of the death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“Let’s not act like we’ve solved the problem because we now have the cops marching with the marchers,” the MSNBC host said. “We still have an unarmed young man that was killed and the issue of that can be lost in all of this.”

The civil rights leader was responding to an apparent major shift on the ground in Ferguson on Thursday evening. After days of violent clashes between heavily armed police forces and protesters, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon changed the course, putting State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson in charge of security operations. Johnson, an African-American who grew up in the area, took a “different approach” from previous days, offering embraces to protesters and at times marching along with them. The number of police in Ferguson on Thursday night also appeared to be smaller and officers appeared to be largely in plainclothes, and the police department’s armored vehicles, riot gear and sniper rifles were absent.

On Friday, Sharpton applauded the developments but said they shouldn’t obscure the fact that there are many more hurdles in the coming days.

“We haven’t even had the funeral” for Brown, he said. “What happens when these kids see their friend laying in the casket? I’ve been through this more than one time. We’re not out of the emotions because we all of a sudden had a good night of marching.”

Sharpton linked the fatal shooting of Brown last weekend to the killings of Florida 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Eric Garner earlier this year in New York City, saying that one relatively peaceful night hasn’t addressed the systemic nature of “excessive force” by police against young black men.

“We don’t even know the name of the policeman yet,” he added. CNN has reported that the Ferguson Police Department on Friday will likely release the name of the officer who fatally shot Brown.

Sharpton will head to Ferguson on Sunday for a rally with Brown’s parents, their attorney Benjamin Crump and Martin Luther King III. Getting to the bottom of Brown’s death, he said, remains the major issue. “I don’t want that to get lost in all the kumbayas that we’re doing in Ferguson now,” he said.